The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ is a khan’s son and a gentleman in his own way,” I told him. “In any event, it was that or nothing. I couldn’t have got through.”

      “And why not? You speak Pushtu; you’re in native dress – God knows you’re dirty enough to pass. It was your duty to see that message into Sale’s own hand – and bring an answer. My God, Flashman, this is a pretty business, when a British officer cannot be trusted …”

      “Now, look you here, Sekundar,” says I, but he came up straight like a little bantam and cut me off.

      “Sir Alexander, if you please,” says he icily, as though I’d never seen him with his breeches down, chasing after some big Afghan bint. He stared at me and took a pace or two round the table.

      “I think I understand,” says he. “I have wondered about you lately, Flashman – whether you were to be fully relied on, or … Well, it shall be for a court-martial to decide—”

      “Court-martial? What the devil!”

      “For wilful disobedience of orders,” says he. “There may be other charges. In any event, you may consider yourself under arrest, and confined to this house. We are all confined anyway – the Afghans are allowing no one to pass between here and the cantonment.”

      “Well, in God’s name, doesn’t that bear out what I’ve been telling you?” I said. “The country’s all up to the eastward, man, and now here in Kabul …”

      “There is no rising in Kabul,” says he. “Merely a little unrest which I propose to deal with in the morning.” He stood there, cock-sure little ass, in his carefully pressed linen suit, with a flower in his button-hole, talking as though he was a schoolmaster promising to reprimand some unruly fags. “It may interest you to know – you who turn tail at rumours – that I have twice this evening received direct threats to my life. I shall not be alive by morning, it is said. Well, well, we shall see about that.”

      “Aye, maybe you will,” says I. “And as to your fine talk that I turn tail at rumours, you may see about that, too. Maybe Akbar Khan will come to show you himself.”

      He smiled at me, not pleasantly. “He is in Kabul; I have even had a message from him. And I am confident that he intends no harm to us. A few dissidents there are, of course, and it may be necessary to read them a lesson. However, I trust myself for that.”

      There was no arguing with his complacency, but I pitched into him hard on his threat of a court-martial for me. You might have thought that any sensible man would have understood my case, but he simply waved my protests aside, and finished by ordering me to my room. So I went, in a rare rage at the self-sufficient folly of the man, and heartily hoping that he would trip over his own conceit. Always so clever, always so sure – that was Burnes. I would have given a pension to see him at a loss for once.

      But I was to see it for nothing.

      It came suddenly, just before breakfast-time, when I was rubbing my eyes after a pretty sleepless night which had dragged itself away very slowly, and very silently for Kabul. It was a grey morning, and the cocks were crowing; suddenly I became aware of a distant murmur, growing to a rumble, and hurried to the window. The town lay still, with a little haze over the houses; the guards were still on the wall of the Residency compound, and in the distance, coming closer, the noise was identifiable as the tramping of feet and the growing clamour of a mob.

There was a shouted order in the courtyard, a clatter of feet on the stairs, and Burnes’s voice calling for his brother, young Charlie, who lived in the Residency with him. I snatched my robe from its peg and hurried down, winding my puggaree on to my head as I went. As I reached the courtyard there was the crack of a musket shot, and a wild yell from beyond the wall; a volley of blows hammered on the gate, and across the top of the wall I saw the vanguard of a charging horde streaming out from between the nearest houses. Bearded faces, flashing knives, they surged up to the wall and fell back, yelling and cursing, while the guards thrust at them with their musket butts. For a moment I thought they would charge again and sweep irresistibly over the wall, but they hung back, a jostling, shrieking crowd, shaking their fists and weapons, while the guardsmen lining the wall looked anxiously back for orders and kept their thumbs poised on their musket-locks.

      Burnes strolled out of the front door and stood in full view at the top of the steps. He was as fresh and calm as a squire taking his first sniff of the morning, but at the sight of him the mob redoubled its clamour and rolled up to the wall, yelling threats and insults while he looked right and left at them, smiling and shaking his head.

“No shooting, havildar,” says he to the guard commander. “It will all quieten down in a moment.”

      “Death to Sekundar!” yelled the mob. “Death to the feringhee pig!”

      Jim Broadfoot, who was George’s younger brother, and little Charlie Burnes, were at Sekundar’s elbow, both looking mighty anxious, but Burnes himself never lost his poise. Suddenly he raised his hand, and the mob beyond the wall fell quiet; he grinned at that, and touched his moustache in that little, confident gesture he had, and then he began to talk to them in Pushtu. His voice was quiet, and must have carried only faintly to them, but they listened for a little as he coolly told them to go home, and stop this folly, and reminded them that he had always been their friend and had done them no harm.

It might have succeeded, for he had the gift of the gab, but show-off that he was, he carried it just too far, and patronised them, and first there were murmurs, and then the clamour swelled up again, more savage than before. Suddenly one Afghan started forward and hurled himself on to the wall, knocking down a sentry; the nearest guard drove at the Afghan with his bayonet, someone in the crowd fired his jezzail, and with one hellish roar the whole mob swept forward, scrambling up the wall.

      The havildar yelled an order, there was the ragged crash of a volley, and the courtyard was full of struggling men, crazy Afghans with their knives hacking and the guard falling back, stabbing with their bayonets and going down beneath the rush. There was no holding them; I saw Broadfoot grab Burnes and hustle him inside the house, and a moment later I was inside myself, slamming the side door in the face of a yelling Ghazi with a dozen of his fellows bounding at his heels.

      It was a stout door, thank God, like the others in the Residency; otherwise we should all have been butchered within five minutes. Blows shattered on the far side of it as I slipped the bar home, and as I hurried along the passage to the main hallway I could hear, above the shrieking and shooting outside, the crash and thud of countless fists and hilts on panels and shutters – it was like being inside a box with demented demons pounding on the lid. Suddenly above the din there was the crash of an ordered volley from the courtyard, and then another, and as the yelling subsided momentarily the havildar’s voice could be heard urging the remnant of the guard into the house. Little bloody odds it would make, I thought; they had us cornered, and it was a case of having our throats cut now or later.

      Burnes and the others were in the hallway, and Sekundar as usual was showing off, affecting carelessness in a tight spot.

      “Wake Duncan with thy knocking,” he quoted, cocking his head on one side at the pounding of the mob. “How many of the guard are inside, Jim?”

      Broadfoot said about a dozen, and Burnes said: “That’s splendid. That makes, let’s see, twelve, and the servants, and us three – hullo, here’s Flashman! Mornin’ Flash; sleep well? Apologise for this rude awakening – about twenty-five, I’d say; twenty fighting men, anyway.”

      “Few enough,” says Broadfoot, examining his pistols. “The niggers’ll be inside before long – we can’t cover every door and window, Sekundar.”

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